The Local Third World Butcher.

We've been searching for a good middle eastern butcher who does nice kafta in our area.
Shouldn't be too hard.

We dropped in to Harris Park a few times recently for Lebanese sweets and coffee...mmmmmmm shortbread and Date Mammoul.

sigh

Do you know how much I enjoy it when they look at Jeff to place the order and instead I ask for things in Arabic?

Well, I like it a lot.

My Arabic has been learned chiefly from Jeff's family, although I have always had Lebanese friends,so by the time I met Jeff, I could already say,

Kes Emek sharmoutah ... meaning your mother has the cunt of a prostitute. And wasn't he impressed the first time I let that fly!

Pretty good start.

Well, since then, I can also say:

• moon
• grape
• chicken
• saucepan
• underpants
• bong
• wheel
• sun
  
• coffee pot
• water
• yoghurt
• broad beans
• green beans
  
• hello
• fourteen
• five
• handbag
• meat cigar (not explaining)
  
• poofter
• lesbian
  
• my dick in your eye, referee (picked this up at a Bulldogs game)
  
• arse
• fart
• ladies
• pine nut
• thinga-me-jig
• fetch me
  
• flea
• pooh
  
• breakfast
• I want to vomit
  
• lemonade/fizzy drink
• donkey
• cock
• kiss my arse
• fuck your mother
  
• beans
• piss/priest - they sound so similar that when I asked Jeff what was the difference, he simply said, "..hhhhhucccccccccchhhhhhhhhh."
  
• follow the breeze
  
• fish
• drink
• all night (I bust this out at the footy as soon as the opposition attract their first penalty)
• eggs/balls
• thirteen
• you're very strong
  
• cat
• bread
  
• old man in the drawer (not explaining that either)
  

Another day, another blog, I may make it my business to construct a dialogue out of my Arabic vocabulary.
Last year, for Round One vs the Roosters, I deliberately learned how to yell out,

"The Roosters are 13 homosexual chickens in ugly old ladies underpants!"

This statement was highly critically acclaimed.


Notable absences in my vocabulary are :

• goodbye
• how are you
• my name is
• thank you
• please
• yes
• no
• still hate the Roosters

Of course these are the basics in life and Jeff doesn't often bother with them enough to teach them to me.

While he can understand Arabic if it's informal, he always answers in English.
He does teach me random words that he thinks are important.

Additionally my friend, Maheb teaches me my requests. I find I learn better this way.

I noticed a couple of years ago that when people speak Arabic in front of me, I no longer notice that I don't understand.
At work and even with my in-laws, it takes me a few sentences before I realise that I didn't catch what they've said.

If it's broken Arabic/English and they're the kind of person I can wave my hands around with, I can sort almost anything out.

Every now and again, I can suddenly pick out a single word from a conversation, so I now stop the orator and demand to know what the word is.
Last time it happened, the word I latched onto was snoo-bor - pine nuts. LOL

I heard, blah blah, chicken, blah blah saucepan, blah blah snoo-bor.

Regardless of all this, my 20 year cultural familiarity did precious little to prepare me for the Kurdish butcher.

First up is the smell.
Made my eyes water and my stomach turn.

I accept that lamb and goat have a more pungent quality than chicken and beef, but I'm also quite certain that you can make the least of that issue through cleanliness if you choose to.

This butcher shop totally rejects the approach of western butchers, in so far as presentation and arrangement of their goods.

A typical Aussie/western butcher will be as clean as possible, or will at least go to the trouble of seeming as clean as possible.

They keep the really scary stuff out the back and the fatty offcuts in Go-Lo plastic tubs under the counter.
The Kurds pretty much reversed all of this.

My friends who are Aussie butchers, kindly showed me one day the buckets that were destined to become either sausages or lipstick.
I couldn't really tell the different at a glance.

The Kurds are unconcerned with such nonsense as presentation and display.

As I stood with my hand over my nose (I figured this was less impolite than vomitting), I noticed that their front window trays, usually reserved for the best sellers or specials, were as follows:

Back left:

Tongues.
Big dappled meaty, ripped outta their heads, tongues.
And lots of them
No attention whatsoever paid to restricting them to their alloted space.

Front left:

Testicles.
Yep, testicles.
Delicate blue veiny, oval treasures.
And lots of them.

Back right:

Tripe.
Not terribly well cleaned either.
I'm not so silly as to suppose that the green stuff was seasoning.

Front right:

Par-boiled penises.
Sheep's I think.
That is, I'm not too cluey in this area, but if they were beef, they were surely not from prize stock, and if they were from a chicken, then I suspect the hormonal component of their feed must be in excess of 85%.

Now, all this was enough to dazzle even the most carnivorous among us, and when I tell you that there were tongues lolling around all over the testicles and penises, you will guess that I was glad I was covering my mouth so that my revolted grin was camouflaged.

It was all very XXXX in there.
Is there Z grade XXXX?
It reminded me of Flesh For Frankenstein a bit too.

You may imagine that I was not looking forward to making any sort of purchase there by the time I noticed the testicle blood pooling around the kafta tray.

And nor did I have to.

They selectively and deliberatley served the darkest people first, even those who came in some 10 minutes after us.

Having experienced this before, I didn't really care too much, so I was taken aback when Hell Boy really got his back up about this.
We left.

On our second attempt a week later to buy said kafta, I waited outside due to the smell and my fear of what may be lurking in those trays this week, but Hell Boy persisted.
After almost 10 minutes again, 2 more people had entered the store and been served ahead of him, he sparked into action.
He told them he was there first, that they were rude, ran a bad business and as they were saying, "Come back, come back", he told them rather clearly to get fucked.

I couldn't agree more.

Particularly seeing as they had all their overdue bills and debt collection notices untidily bulldog clipped right up against the window, clearly for the purpose of my entertainment.

Nasty little business that one.

So, looks like I'll have to bust out the mincer and make my own kafta.

God knows I'll have to do better than them.